Online Meeting on Gender-Responsive Cities Closes a Conference Series on Inclusive Cities

Geneva Academy

16 June 2020

A two-day online expert meeting on gender-responsive cities closed last week a series of three online conferences on inclusive cities – co-organized by the Geneva Human Rights Platform, UN-Habitat, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Geneva Cities Hub – aimed at informing UN-Habitat Strategic Plan for 2020-2023.

Gender-Responsive Cities

About 80 gender experts – members of UN-Habitat Advisory Group on Gender (AGGI), local level politicians and activists, the CEDAW Chairperson Hillary Gbedemah and the City of Geneva Mayor Sami Kanaan – discussed gender equality at the local level and measures that local government could take towards this goal.

‘As Chair of AGGI, I want to highlight the importance of local leaders and authorities and their role in each territory, as highlighted by the current pandemic, which takes place in cities. Political leaders today are concerned with the immediate responses to the pandemic, but this is also an opportunity for radical changes. Making structural changes demands to feminize politics, to integrate gender in urban planning, to achieve the needed basic housing and infrastructures and social opportunities for all. To address these challenges, political leaders must gather different actors and social organizations, universities, feminists and grassroots groups to implement the emergency action that can lay the foundations for radical changes. AGGI is ready to advise UN-Habitat in this endeavour, this is our role’ stresses Ana Falu AGGI Chair and Emeritus Professor at the National University of Cordoba.

Towards Inclusive Cities for All

This series of three online conferences – financed by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) through UN-Habitat – aims at developing operational documents to translate human rights standards at the city level for local governments, city-level practitioners and decision-makers, as well as national governments interested in local governance issues.

The outcome documents of these three conferences will be made available on this space.

‘This series of expert meetings on inclusive cities collected expertise of about 250 individuals working on different aspects of inclusivity – from a general human-rights based approach to specific gender-responsive policies and inclusion of older persons and persons with disabilities. Inclusivity was also the keyword of the proceeding of our meeting series: translation into three languages, sign language and closed captioning insured the accessibility of this meeting for a diverse group of participants’ explains Felix Kirchmeier, Executive Director of the Geneva Human Rights Platform.

‘These three Expert Group Meetings will assist UN-Habitat to better implement its four-years strategic plan by focusing on human rights and inclusive cities – in particular for persons with disabilities and older persons, with also a focus on gender – and remind all of us what is required to ensure that ‘no one is truly left behind’. In a world that is rapidly urbanizing and ageing, this was an invaluable opportunity to address some key issues and showcase how older persons and persons with disabilities contribute as active agents of change and not just as recipients of services’ stresses Katherine Kline, Co-chair of the UN-Habitat General Assembly of Partners-Partner Constituent Groups of Older Persons.